In recent years, the smartphone has become the most used communication devices. With its ability to store and manage data, it has also enabled people to use it as a personal time management device. A recently published article in the Business Insider magazine points out that there will be 1.5 billion people with smartphone by December 2013. Smartphones have the capability to send and receive data to and from the Internet, in addition to the ability to process the data. Today, several Americans manage their daily schedules through cloud computing (Ex. Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook). Such interfaces are accessible through desktop computers at the workplace and through smartphones on the go. If one wishes to have coffee with a friend, he/she may create an event or a meeting on such a calendar. When the time comes, the individual will be alerted about this event on their smartphone. Such automation through the use of cloud computing has added convenience to peoples' schedules in recent years. However, such automation does not exist for automatically silencing a smartphone if you are in a quiet place like a church or changing the ringtones based on the context of the location, event or content on the smartphone. The lack of an intelligent system to selectively silence smartphones can be especially troublesome when a person is in a meeting or conducting an important event.
There are many instances of important appointments, engagements and events, where a person carrying a communication device like a smartphone, is interrupted with phone calls that can wait. There are also several instances where one puts the smartphone on silent or vibrate and forgets to reset it to ring and misses an important call from their boss at work.
Additionally, risks of distraction associated with cellphone usage have prompted lawmakers to pass laws prohibiting use of cellphones during driving. There is no intelligent mechanism to silence a smartphone if one is cruising at a certain speed on the freeway and it may be best that a smartphone does not ring unless it is an emergency.
The invention presented here implements an intelligent method of managing ringtones and alarms based on the users' schedule of events throughout the day, the geo-location factors of the smartphone, and the content being received on the smartphones.